Back to Work

Not really a fun vacation....but the longest I've been off from work for several years.  Pity I had to have a heart attack to take it.  Still, it was nice to goof off and take it easy for a week.  I did peek at emails every once in awhile but managed not to really care about what was going on or feel any desire to respond.

Nice.

I could get use to this.

All the more reason I need to get my ass back to work tomorrow.

Cold Turkey

If you had suggested to me over a week ago that I quit smoking cold turkey, I would have said "no fuggin way".  I was convinced that I couldn't cut myself off suddenly from nicotine without dooming any quit smoking attempts to failure after a matter of hours.  I needed patches, gum, lozenges, e-cigarettes....anything to keep the nicotine going while not actually lighting up and inhaling smoke.

And it's really stupid when you think of it.  I mean, for all other types of addiction the course of action is to stop using the addictive drug.  Alcoholics aren't given an alcohol patch.  Crack addicts aren't given cocaine mints to suck on.  Yet there seems to be an acceptance around nicotine addiction that it is okay to keep taking nicotine while trying to detox from nicotine.

All other addictions have a 12-step program.  I've never put much stock into AA, NA, or whatever Anonymous group ...I mean, don't get me wrong...if it helps somebody I am definitely all in favor of whatever works to get somebody to stop using a harmful drug.  That's the point, when you boil it all down, of 12-step programs; stop using the drug.  So I boiled it down a bit further and just have a 1-step program....stop smoking.  I refused a nicotine patch while in the hospital.  I wanted off the cigs.  I wanted off the nicotine.  I actually used the hospital as a detox.

It worked.  I am nicotine free.  Oh, I still have the cravings and the urges, but I can deal with them and I'm dealing with them with a clean body (relatively speaking).  Cold turkey is really the only true way to quit smoking.

Also good for sandwiches...of which I would kill for one right about now...but that's another post for later.

Long Week

There's an old saying...Life is what happens while you are making other plans.

Boy, is that a truism for me over the past week.  It certainly wasn't in my plans to be diabetic with heart disease.  I didn't exactly plan on giving up nicotine cold turkey.  I didn't really plan on having to watch every morsel of food down to the last carbohydrate.  I absolutely wasn't planning last week to be taking all kinds of medications, checking my blood sugar several times a day, and injecting myself with insulin.  I didn't plan for any of this.

Yet now, one week from last Friday, my life has been completely changed.  In a funny way, it may all be for the better.

Doesn't much feel like it right now though.

Shit Just Got Real.

Isn't that the way things usually go?  Everybody talks about doing this, doing that, not doing whatever....and we talk and talk and talk, but really, where is the pressure to change?  I have the title of this blog of being finally fit after 55.  Yet, here I am, after 55, still not fit.  Probably best to change that title.

It was always sometime in the future.  Someday.  Not today though...got too much to do and reaaaalllly don't want to get into all that effort of changing my lifestyle today.  Maybe this weekend.  Maybe next month.  Before my next birthday for sure!

It was all bullshit.

Oh, I was making small changes here and there.  Losing a bit of weight.  Kind of exercising.  Eating better.  But ignoring the big elephant in the room.  My father developed diabetes.  I knew I was a prime candidate for it, but I had myself in denial.  My father had a heart attack which eventually led to his death.  I also knew I was a prime candidate and also was in fever pitched denial about the possibility of following in Dad's footsteps.

Last Friday though, I started retracing some of those footsteps of Dad.  I had been having chest pains off and on for several days.  Usually they would go away and I would forget about it.  Friday night though, they didn't go away after a few seconds...they go worse.  Now, I may really thrive in the state of denial but even I know the symptoms of a heart attack.  So, with great reluctance, I told my wife who quickly whisked me off to the hospital emergency room.

While getting poked and prodded at the ER, blood was taken and it rang the bell on the super duper sweet side.  Into a hospital bed I went with IV's, insulin, constant monitoring, and scheduled for all kinds of heart tests the next day.  The next day confirmed a problem with my heart and a stent installed.

So the upshot is....diabetes and heart disease.  Neither possibilities any more.  I'm having to make significant life changes in just about everything I do.  No choice.  No choice.

Well....I guess I always had a choice.  I just have to live with the consequences of the ones I made for myself.

Wednesday Cat Blogging

Well Hell...Here I Go Again

I'm up late at night, avoiding going to bed, because I plan to quit smoking tomorrow.  Getting that last cigarette in and mourning the process of yet another attempt in giving up the filthy habit.

I've tried several times.  A couple of attempts have been for several days..even weeks...but I always relapse and quickly return to my pack a day habit.  It's really the one thing keeping me from my goal.  Not diet.  Not exercise.  Smoking is the most damaging thing to my health and life hands down.

Plus, it's costing me a friggin fortune.

Tomorrow is going to suck.  May as well suck it up and face it.  Goodnight.

No Time to Write

Actually....it's more like most of my time is writing, just not on any thing fun.  My day is filled with writing reports, reading other reports and writing responses, letters, memos, policies...I spend hours typing away.  So when I finally get home about the last thing I want to do is sit down and compose more writing.  Skip a day, then another, and another.  Before you know it, weeks have passed without doing a thing.

I think it is like exercise.  You have to set aside the time to do it or it will not get done.

Another Year Older?

Where does the time go?  It seems like only yesterday that I turned 55 and started this particular blog.  Now I've turned 56 and not much has changed.  Still kind of fat.  Still out of shape.  I think I have slowed down the spiral in turning into a blob...but I still have a long way to go.

And 56....man....that age has been bothering me all week.  Jeeze, four more years and I'll turn 60 and, no matter how you look at it, 60 is old!  I'm actually in spitting distance from Social Security.  If I make it to the national average on age, I only have about twenty more years left alive.

Then, I decided to stop worrying about getting older and started looking at age as an accomplishment.  I survived another year.  I'm in better shape physically, mentally, and even financially than a lot of other guys my age.  Let the birthdays come...fuck em.  I can take it.

 I'll keep on this goal of becoming physically fit because it is a REAL challenge.  Any 20 something can be fit.  Doing it after you've abused and neglected your body for over thirty years; that's an accomplishment.  So...away with all this self loathing just because I managed not to die young.  Back on focus.  Back to the plan.  Back in black baby.